How would you respond if your 6 y.o. DS said, - Page 2

[Just1More]

I agree that it was just an easy identifier for him, no more than a red shirt or purple hat.

But, I would have said, "Yes! He did! Did you know that most people think it isn't nice to say... A better way to say that could be...(and give him examples.)"

I do the same thing when my children point out anything of that nature (fat, with glasses, or really, anything.) It's been my experience that you can't know what will bother someone, so I have been trying to teach my children not to comment on a person's appearance in any way, unless they are giving a compliment. So, rather than describing the boy who is brown, or the lady who doesn't have an arm (yes...that was loudly said by my dd at 3), it is "the boy with the bat" or "the lady standing by the door." I think children are almost always just not sure of how to say it, and are happy to be told how to.

[Thalia the Muse]

Dark skin isn't like being fat or an amputee, though (things that we don't comment on because they are generally regarded negatively) -- I would worry that a conversation like that would give the impression that it is somehow shameful.

[wookie]

Originally Posted by Thalia the Muse

Dark skin isn't like being fat or an amputee, though (things that we don't comment on because they are generally regarded negatively) -- I would worry that a conversation like that would give the impression that it is somehow shameful.

whereas fat or amputee might carry a negative connotation (or a painful memory etc. in case of an amputee), dark skin, like light skin, is just a fact and should be treated as such.

[Just1More]

No, we treat all of it as "just as fact."

When I talk about it with them, her, really, ds is still too little, we talk about it in terms of the other person's feelings. We talk about how a person is so much more than any physical attribute about them. We discuss it in simple ways, too, about things that really don't matter...like a sticker on your hand. I would rather not be referred to as "that person with the sticker on their hand", and nothing more. Dd gets that, and she understands that it isn't a problem with the *person", or whatever the fact may be, but that it just isn't polite to comment on anybody's anything. Does that make sense?

[Thalia the Muse]

But if you're across a crowded room with a sticker on your hand and I see you, I don't know, drop some change, sure I'm going to say "Oh, that lady with the sticker on her hand just dropped her money -- let's go pick it up and give it back to her." I don't know your name, so if I want to refer to you in the third person, a physical attribute (like dark skin) is about all I have at my disposal!

[lucysmom]

I agree with the many PPs who are saying there is no problem with what your DS said. One note though. We (DD, her dad, me) are "white." One of the features of white privilege, of course, is that we are the only folks around who don't have a color. We're the default; other people have a color, which may be called out to distinguish or describe them. But we are always (to other white people at least) described by something other than skin color.

So ... I always go out of my own way to describe people, ALL people, in terms of their skin tone as well as other attributes. If DD asks "which teacher," and the teacher is "white," I say "the tall woman with light colored skin."

I think it is really cool that many in our kids' generation, perhaps for the first time in this country's history, really grasp that people come in different colors and while in the past, people thought that was a big deal, we know now it isn't, except that it makes people interesting in their differences. The difference between the way my DD is growing up in this regard, and the world I grew up in, is enormous.

A funny related note -- on the night of the 2008 presidential election, DD watched Sasha & Malia Obama with their parents, and then turned to me and asked whether girls with light skin (like her) could grow up to have brown skin. You know, so they'd have a chance to live in the White House. Kind of mind-blowing.

[Thalia the Muse]

That is amazing! And, LOL, my daughter mostly just wanted to know how she could get to live in the White House so she could get a new puppy too.